DISCUSSION OF Timely Industry Information as an Assurance Service--Evidence on the Information Content of the Book-to-Bill Ratio.

This article focuses on the issue of providing timely industry information as an assurance service responsibility. Public accountants can eliminate competitive disadvantages in removing the trade association (and its former and future employees) from the process. Public accountants can eliminate perceptions of bias that might be associated with the production of such information by the trade association itself. Public accountants can ensure the confidentiality of data received from individual firms within the industry. But if people are being asked to add "credibility" public accountants could provide assurance on the completeness of the information gathering process. They could provide assurance on the controls over production of the information production at the individual firm levels. They could provide some form of limited assurance on the summarized information released. The author's concerns in all of this are one of cost/benefit and, ultimately, how much assurance public accountants can practically provide.